Scenes from a mob

It’s three o’clock on a Saturday afternoon and I’m standing outside of one of my downtown Toronto haunts, The Rivoli on Queen near Spadina. The door is locked. The wait staff gaze nervously through the window. Directly across the street the sales people at Steve’s Music Store flash peace signs from the display windows. I’m in a mob.

The police are in full riot gear, their faces indistinguishable behind plastic face shields. They have donned gas masks and one officer has what looks like a rubber bullet gun held high against his chest. The police are badly outnumbered and surrounded. Should the crowd on either side surge, the cops have nowhere to go.

There’s a strange chemistry to how a crowd transforms into a mob and a mob into a riot; it’s like adding salt to water on the brink of boiling. A single skirmish between one hot head and the police, a collective flinch from a line of cops or a hurled object precipitates an immediate wave of panic and rage. This time it’s mostly panic. The officer with the large gun changes his grip and the pack reels and flees like wild animals toward Spadina Street. I’m not afraid of the officer, I’m terrified of being trampled.

Successive platoons marching two by two knife through the mass of people to bolster the officers. Soon the danger of riot is dulled but it’s not enough to prevent two police cars from being set on fire.

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Let’s be clear about who is in the streets this rainy Saturday afternoon. There are legitimate protesters concerned about things like fair wages, climate change and poverty. They are still gathered at the main protest site at the Provincial Legislature. This crowd consists of whack jobs brandishing signs about the Bilderberg Group, 9/11 and corporate conspiracies. There are also the insurgent vandals who are unleashing a campaign of violence with the precision of a bank heist. And then there are the on-lookers. Thousands of people taking pictures and reporting to friends over their cell phones. “Yeah, I’m on Queen. It’s pretty scary right now.”

The afternoon of chaos is not without Felliniesque moments of comedic weirdness. As I flee the line on Queen Street a man pulls up on a bicycle built for two with his ten year old daughter. At McCall Street a procession of wedding limousines nudges its way into the melee. I spot a crowd massed around a television shop. They’re watching a soccer game. Next door to the smashed Starbucks there’s a guy calmly making crepes in the window. Perhaps my favorite moment of wigginess is when I spot an Israeli peace activist and a Palestinian peace activist in a furious spittle trading argument that appears on the verge of fisticuffs.

The situation closer to the financial core is much more serious. A strategy designed to break up the mob has backfired. Police tasked to hold demonstrators north of Adelaide at Bay are struggling. One by one punks run at the officers and the crowd advances. The cops retreat and the mob follows, for a moment the police are trapped in the scaffolding of a construction project. But with Bay Street now open the mob turns and runs south toward the burning police cars.

If there’s anyone to feel sorry for in all this mess -aside from the shop owners who hardly qualify as “The Man” but whose windows were smashed nonetheless- it’s the police officers. Ordinary men and women who opted for a life in law enforcement. Their faces remain neutral as they endure an endless cascade of insults from amateur anarchists who know everything about Orwell and Brecht but probably never read them. “Nazis!” “Pigs!” “Your children are ashamed of you,” “Your fathers are ashamed of you.” What ever happened to putting flowers in gun barrels?

I make my way north on Yonge. About every third shop has been vandalized. American Apparel, Urban Outfitters, the Zanzibar strip club. I meet a friend headed toward the trouble who says he’s curious to see the damage and planning on dinner at Jack Astor’s. “Better call ahead.”

I arrive back at my radio station at Yonge and St-Clair now several kilometers away from trouble. As I use my pass card to enter the Toronto headquarters of my company’s billion dollar operation I’m not sure if I’m “The Man” but I’d like to crack a few heads.

— John Moore is the host of Moore in the Morning on NewsTalk 1010 Toronto. He’s sure something important happened at the G20 but may have been distracted.

In the wake of a Grammy Awards ceremony that disappointed many, from Kanye West to the masses on Twitter lamenting the state of pop music, a historical perspective is key. Few are better poised to offer one than Andy Kim.